A few weeks ago, when the whole world was singing the praises of Angelina Jolie – for condescending to give birth to her child in Namibia, I published this article entitled To Jolie and Pitt – a child is born…to save Namibia? As the title suggests, mine was a discordant voice of unmitigated apostasy (towards this blessed event) – as the following stanza clearly attests:
…Where I couldn’t care any less about the way people worship celebrities or the way celebrities orchestrate their symbiotic relationship with the paparazzi, I am profoundly dismayed by the way Namibian authorities have allowed themselves to be played by Jolie and Pitt. Because selling-out their sovereignty for charitable gifts totaling $315,000 from this Hollywood couple – to say nothing of compromising their national heritage by acting as if the birth of the Jolie-Pitt child is the best thing that has ever happened in Namibia – seems naïve, misguided and celebrity-obsessed to an almost unconscionable degree.
But my hope for Namibia’s sovereignty and national heritage has been somewhat restored. Because last weekend, I read that Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has condemned Jolie and her movie-star consort for behaving like “colonial overlords” during their Mary and Joseph pilgrimage to Africa.
Specifically, the NSHR criticized them for using “heavy-handed and brutal tactics” to ensure their privacy and summed up its official complaint as follows:
To shut down a national border so she can give birth in peace is a massive abuse of power. [The Namibian government should be spending more money on its own pregnant mothers] who go without medical care, food and shelter! But government can afford to spend thousands of taxpayers’ money on the so-called protection of the privacy for a filthy rich Hollywood family! Who is fooling whom?
Clearly, for the UN’s most celebrated Ambassador of Goodwill, this is a damning and well-founded complaint; which is only exacerbated by the disrespect Jolie showed Namibian doctors by flying in her private obstetrics team from Los Angeles to deliver her baby….
NOTE: When I read this NSHR complaint, I was reminded of Ray Donavan – Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Labor – who, for months, was portrayed on the front pages of major newspapers around the world as a liar and a crook. But when the allegations against him were proved false, report of his exoneration was buried so deep – in the few of those major newspapers that even bothered to run it – that it went virtually unnoticed. This in turn led Donovan to coin the now famous lament:
Where do I go to get my reputation back?
Alas, given that report of its principled complaint will also go virtually unnoticed, this seems a fitting lament for the NSHR on behalf of the people of Namibia. Nonetheless, I wonder what this portends for their Shiloh national holiday….
Angelina Jolie,Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, Namibia
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